I left New Zealand mid-2003, bound for Istanbul and a new lif. After two years, a Belgian guy lured me into his world, deep in the heart of Europe. For a long time I was an in-process immigrant. One day we married. These days it's about photography, a little red wine and wandering ... and so the journey goes.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Anita McNaught and Robert Fisk, Journalists

New Zealanders aren’t afraid of physical work, so the idea that if you employ a New Zealander you’ll get the work done is absolutely the case. But England is full of people who should die from the amount of work that they do. The gift of life in New Zealand is that you might work bloody hard, but you never lose the joy, because you cannot ignore the pleasures this culture gives you: social, geographical, culinary, musical.

Anita McNaught is one of my heroes.I first saw her on New Zealand television while she was working there in the 90s - an Englishwoman in the colonies. England eventually stole her back and now, much to my surprise, she's working for Fox News in the States.

I loved what she said of Kiwis in the quoted extract above.The rest of the interview is here.

In it he answers a question people who know his work have often wondered about. Why does he stay reporting on the Middle East when it's clearly been so dangerous during his many years there.

You know what it’s like for me? I still feel like I’m 29 years old which is the age I was when I went to Lebanon in 1976, but for me it’s like you know you can read a book late at night, a gripping history book, very vividly written, and you think: Just one more chapter, so you hang on to see what’s next in Iran, what’s next in Afghanistan, one more chapter, or in Iraq, now, and you look at the clock and its 2.30am, and before you know it you can see the dawn peeping through the curtains. That’s what it’s like in the Middle East, that’s why I stay.